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2 thoughts on “Latest Legal Aid Stats”

The message imparted, no doubt,is that for the first time ever, parents are sorting it out for themselves.

The logic fails when considering:

– that private law applications, regardless of the type of application, are about children seeing both parents.
– LASPO does not reduce the amount of children in the country not their demographics
– LASPO only reduces applications to court
so:
– the kind of parents who deny access to children, of either gender, won’t be reasonable due to LASPO
– LASPO results in less children seeing both parents
– LASPO, in the sort and especially the long run, costs more than it saves, due the poor outcomes for those children
– LASPO is an investment in destruction
– LASPO will cost more in future welfare benefit payments, unless the eradicate welfare
– it does not matter to today’s politicians, because they will soon be gone

But: there is both a silver lining and a hellish effect, as those of us who are in the courts now regularly see. The silver lining is that false accusers cannot hide behind professional liars. The benefit to the public purse and to children in these cases is immense. The court has a chance to wrap these cases quickly. The hellish effect is that, well…yes they they can hide behind professional liars, if they set the frame as advised ie. spend time in a refuge etc and qualify for legal aid. Apparently, that validates the allegations, with the added bonus of a council flat down the line. The other way is to obtain an NMO ex parte, and achieve open ended representation with the other side denied the same, and the court never listing a return hearing for the NMO (the court’s own tricksy response policy to LASPO). It’s no longer about the quality of the evidence, but whether you hide it behind something that looks good -, before you can do it the old way and hide it behind a lawyer.

And before anyone squeals “how about genuine complainants” I’d suggest that the genuine victims of domestic violence and their children are the least served by the cheats. Some will be amongst those refused legal aid, because what are now scarce resources of legal aid are deflected where they are not needed. LASPO should only be given after a lie detector test – on both sets of litigants.